Happy World Book Day all you Comfortable Books, you…

As is tradition, children all over the UK have gone to school dressed up as characters from their favourite books. Or this year, more likely, stayed at home due to schools being closed by the snow and spent the day actually reading their favourite books.

That’s what kids do on snow days, right? Curl up and read? I’m not a parent, but I’m pretty sure that’s right.

Anyway, I thought that in honour of this day rather than talking about one of my favourite books I would instead discuss those comfortable books we all love. You know the ones I mean. The ones that have been on your shelves for longer than you can remember. The ones you have been read countless times; because you needed something familiar and friendly to get you through a tough time, had nothing new to read, or just wanted to re-read an old favourite. You know the story like the back of your hand, but they’re either so good or have such sentimental value that you could never lose interest. The ones with worn down covers and curling pages, adorned with multiple tiny tears that broke your heart at the time but now seem part of its overall cosiness. They are not something you bought with the intent of it becoming like this. It’s something that just develops over time.

I love hardback books. They may be harder to carry around or read on the go, but there is just something solid and satisfying about them. Once an author is on my Favourites List I’ll always start picking up their books in hardback rather than paperback. But sometimes you just can’t beat a comfortable, beaten up old paperback.

I’ve actually just finished re-reading one of these; Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth. Look at it there. I believe that I “acquired” this one from my parents. If I remember correctly, I borrowed it to read at university, and have simply never returned it. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read and re-read it over the following 13 years, and I’ve no idea how many time other members of my family did so before me. Each time he published a follow up I bought them straight away, in hardback of course, but but I could never bring myself to replace this one.

Not all books like this survive. I remember watching as my family’s copies of the Discworld books were read into oblivion; slowly falling apart or becoming damaged until they were replaced, with like for like or by more durable hardcover upgrades. And when I left home and had to buy them for myself, I always picked them up in hardcover, or course. You don’t buy your favourite author of all time in paperback if you have the choice.

But this one has lasted. It’s 28 years old now, and I’m sure within a few years I’ll feel the urge to pick it up, open it’s ragged cover and read the smooth, gently yellowing pages once again. Who knows, maybe it’ll last another twenty years or so until I have children old enough to give it ago and it will somehow transfer my my collection to theirs. Or maybe not.

I’ll never stop buying hardbacks. But whatever their qualities they’ll never quite have the same character as a good, well-worn and well-loved paperback.